Virtual Boy Advance and Macs

Recently, I've tried to play some classic games on Visual Boy Advance (1.7.4). The problem, though, is that, I've never been able to surpass 70% or so; there's some pretty bad slowdown, even with frameskip set on 5. I'm assumng that the very choppy sound is due to the same issue. Anyway, here're my stats:

500 MHz Powerbook G3
256 MB RAM
Mac OS X 10.3
ATI Rage M3 8 MB

Is it just that the computer's too weak to run the emulation smoothly?

I am not a Mac expert but that "ATI Rage M3 8 MB" does not look good. That is all I can think of.

I think video cards are a cross-platform affair. Certainly the specs on that one are the poo, but I think the processor might be the real bottleneck. I know it's no use comparing speeds on different architectures, but my 750MHz PC struggles with VBA. I imagine a 500MHz Mac would be similarly underpowered.

Most people think that GBA would be easier on the PCto emulate because it looks primitive and 2D, but that's really not the case sadly. I remember Boycott Advance was a bit faster for me - is there a Macdaddy version of that, little Mama?

I still have that Pentium 3 @ 500Mhz & 128mb ram. The only difference in those specs is that I have a 32mb graphics card and thats better than your 8mb card.

Try upgrading your graphics card if you have money to spare, if not for the games it should at least boost up your system's performance especially since you have OS X as an operating system.


Mac version of Boycott: http://boycottadvance.emuunlim.com/Downloads.htm

Yes, but it's a DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE Lefteris. How you can come up with that comment right after I said that numerical processors specs bare no comparison escapes me.

You must stop when you ask this. And realize, it is Lefteris

All will become clear h34r:

Thanks for all your help.
It is a laptop, so alas I can not upgrade the card.
I use this Mac mostly for papers and surfing, I have a PC arriving in a few weeks, I am sure that will run better.

Again thank you for your help. Anyother advice is welcome.

If you have slowdowns this means that your PC doesn't meet the minimum requirements of VBA,so upgrade your processor is the most right answer in my opininon ,CAUSE I had the same problems with VBA in my old PC 600MHZ and it played games at 75%(Castlevania:Aria of Sorrow) now with my new 1.8GHZ processor it plays all the games at 99% which is the 100% in VBA.

I hope that your new PC has a more powerful processor ,cause the card is good even 8MB cause i have tried in many PC-s(my friends PC)so it worked even with a 8MB VIDEO CARD ,16 and 32.In most of the case i should be right

YOU NEED A POWERFUL PROCESSOR.That's all.

Thanks for that Leon. I think reiterating what was already said in the thread in the style of a manic child really helped matters.